When, trembling all over, she entered the dining-room, Fiorsen was standing by the sideboard, holding the child.
He came straight up and put her into Gyp's arms.
"Take her," he said, "and do what you will. Be happy."
Hugging her baby, close to the door as she could get, Gyp answered nothing. Her heart was in such a tumult that she could not have spoken a word to save her life; relieved, as one dying of thirst by unexpected water; grateful, bewildered, abashed, yet instinctively aware of something evanescent and unreal in his altruism. Daphne Wing! What bargain did this represent?
Fiorsen must have felt the chill of this instinctive vision, for he cried out:
"Yes! You never believed in me; you never thought me capable of good!
Why didn't you?"
Gyp bent her face over her baby to hide the quivering of her lips.
"I am sorry—very, very sorry."
Fiorsen came closer and looked into her face.
"By God, I am afraid I shall never forget you—never!"
Tears had come into his eyes, and Gyp watched them, moved, troubled, but still deeply mistrusting.
He brushed his hand across his face; and the thought flashed through her:
'He means me to see them! Ah, what a cynical wretch I am!'
Fiorsen saw that thought pass, and muttering suddenly:
"Good-bye, Gyp! I am not all bad. I AM NOT!" He tore the door open and was gone.
That passionate "I am not!" saved Gyp from a breakdown. No; even at his highest pitch of abnegation, he could not forget himself.
Relief, if overwhelming, is slowly realized; but when, at last, what she had escaped and what lay before her were staring full in each other's face, it seemed to her that she must cry out, and tell the whole world of her intoxicating happiness. And the moment little Gyp was in Betty's arms, she sat down and wrote to Summerhay:
"DARLING,"I've had a fearful time. My baby was stolen by him while I was with you. He wrote me a letter saying that he would give her back to me if I gave you up. But I found I couldn't give you up, not even for my baby. And then, a few minutes ago, he brought her—none the worse. Tomorrow we shall all go down to Mildenham; but very soon, if you still want me, I'll come with you wherever you like. My father and Betty will take care of my treasure till we come back; and then, perhaps, the old red house we saw—after all. Only—now is the time for you to draw back. Look into the future—look far! Don't let any foolish pity—or honour—weigh with you; be utterly sure, I do beseech you. I can just bear it now if I know it's for your good. But afterward it'll be too late. It would be the worst misery of all if I made you unhappy. Oh, make sure—make sure! I shall understand. I mean this with every bit of me. And now, good-night, and perhaps—good-bye.
"Your
"GYP."
She read it over and shivered. Did she really mean that she could bear it if he drew back—if he did look far, far into the future, and decided that she was not worth the candle? Ah, but better now—than later.
She closed and sealed the letter, and sat down to wait for her father. And she thought: 'Why does one have a heart? Why is there in one something so much too soft?'
Ten days later, at Mildenham station, holding her father's hand, Gyp could scarcely see him for the mist before her eyes. How good he had been to her all those last days, since she told him that she was going to take the plunge! Not a word of remonstrance or complaint.
"Good-bye, my love! Take care of yourself; wire from London, and again from Paris." And, smiling up at her, he added: "He has luck; I had none."
The mist became tears, rolled down, fell on his glove.
"Not too long out there, Gyp!"
She pressed her wet cheek passionately to his. The train moved, but, so long as she could see, she watched him standing on the platform, waving his grey hat, then, in her corner, sat down, blinded with tears behind her veil. She had not cried when she left him the day of her fatal marriage; she cried now that she was leaving him to go to her incredible happiness.
Strange! But her heart had grown since then.
PART IVI
Little Gyp, aged nearly four and a half that first of May, stood at the edge of the tulip border, bowing to two hen turkeys who were poking their heads elegantly here and there among the flowers. She was absurdly like her mother, the same oval-shaped face, dark arched brows, large and clear brown eyes; but she had the modern child's open-air look; her hair, that curled over at the ends, was not allowed to be long, and her polished brown legs were bare to the knees.
"Turkeys! You aren't good, are you? Come ON!" And, stretching out her hands with the palms held up, she backed away from the tulip-bed. The turkeys, trailing delicately their long-toed feet and uttering soft, liquid interrogations, moved after her in hopes of what she was not holding in her little brown hands. The sun, down in the west, for it was past tea-time, slanted from over the roof of the red house, and painted up that small procession—the deep blue frock of little Gyp, the glint of gold in the chestnut of her hair; the daisy-starred grass; the dark birds with translucent red dewlaps, and checkered tails and the tulip background, puce and red and yellow. When she had lured them to the open gate, little Gyp raised herself, and said:
"Aren't you duffies, dears? Shoo!" And on the tails of the turkeys she shut the gate. Then she went to where, under the walnut-tree—the one large tree of that walled garden—a very old Scotch terrier was lying, and sitting down beside him, began stroking his white muzzle, saying:
"Ossy, Ossy, do you love me?"
Presently, seeing her mother in the porch, she jumped up, and crying out:
"Ossy—Ossy! Walk!" rushed to Gyp and embraced her legs, while the old
Scotch terrier slowly followed.
Thus held prisoner, Gyp watched the dog's approach. Nearly three years had changed her a little. Her face was softer, and rather more grave, her form a little fuller, her hair, if anything, darker, and done differently—instead of waving in wings and being coiled up behind, it was smoothly gathered round in a soft and lustrous helmet, by which fashion the shape of her head was better revealed.
"Darling, go and ask Pettance to put a fresh piece of sulphur in Ossy's water-bowl, and to cut up his meat finer. You can give Hotspur and Brownie two lumps of sugar each; and then we'll go out." Going down on her knees in the porch, she parted the old dog's hair, and examined his eczema, thinking: "I must rub some more of that stuff in to-night. Oh, ducky, you're not smelling your best! Yes; only—not my face!"
A telegraph-boy was coming from the gate. Gyp opened the missive with the faint tremor she always felt when Summerhay was not with her.
"Detained; shall be down by last train; need not come up to-morrow.—BRYAN."
When the boy was gone, she stooped down and stroked the old dog's head.
"Master home all day to-morrow, Ossy—master home!"
A voice from the path said, "Beautiful evenin', ma'am."
The "old scoundrel," Pettance, stiffer in the ankle-joints, with more lines in his gargoyle's face, fewer stumps in his gargoyle's mouth, more film over his dark, burning little eyes, was standing before her, and, behind him, little Gyp, one foot rather before the other, as Gyp had been wont to stand, waited gravely.
"Oh, Pettance, Mr. Summerhay will be at home all to-morrow, and we'll go a long ride: and when you exercise, will you call at the inn, in case I don't go that way, and tell Major Winton I expect him to dinner to-night?"
"Yes, ma'am; and I've seen the pony for little Miss Gyp this morning, ma'am. It's a mouse pony, five year old, sound, good temper, pretty little paces. I says to the man: 'Don't you come it over me,' I says; 'I was born on an 'orse. Talk of twenty pounds, for that pony! Ten, and lucky to get it!' 'Well,' he says, 'Pettance, it's no good to talk round an' round with you. Fifteen!' he says. 'I'll throw you one in,' I says, 'Eleven! Take it or leave it.' 'Ah!' he says, 'Pettance, YOU know 'ow to buy an 'orse. All right,' he says; 'twelve!' She's worth all of fifteen, ma'am, and the major's passed her. So if you likes to have 'er, there she is!"
Gyp looked at her little daughter, who had given one excited hop, but now stood still, her eyes flying up at her mother and her lips parted; and she thought: "The darling! She never begs for anything!"
"Very well, Pettance; buy her."
The "old scoundrel" touched his forelock:
"Yes, ma'am—very good, ma'am. Beautiful evenin', ma'am." And, withdrawing at his gait of one whose feet are at permanent right angles to the legs, he mused: 'And that'll be two in my pocket.'
Ten minutes later Gyp, little Gyp, and Ossian emerged from the garden gate for their evening walk. They went, not as usual, up to the downs, but toward the river, making for what they called "the wild." This was an outlying plot of neglected ground belonging to their farm, two sedgy meadows, hedged by banks on which grew oaks and ashes. An old stone linhay, covered to its broken thatch by a huge ivy bush, stood at the angle where the meadows met. The spot had a strange life to itself in that smooth, kempt countryside of cornfields, grass, and beech-clumps; it was favoured by beasts and birds, and little Gyp had recently seen two baby hares there. From an oak-tree, where the crinkled leaves were not yet large enough to hide him, a cuckoo was calling and they stopped to look at the grey bird till he flew off. The singing and serenity, the green and golden oaks and ashes, the flowers—marsh-orchis, ladies' smocks, and cuckoo-buds, starring the rushy grass—all brought to Gyp that feeling of the uncapturable spirit which lies behind the forms of nature, the shadowy, hovering smile of life that is ever vanishing and ever springing again out of death. While they stood there close to the old linhay a bird came flying round them in wide circles, uttering shrill cries. It had a long beak and long, pointed wings, and seemed distressed by their presence. Little Gyp squeezed her mother's hand.
"Poor bird! Isn't it a poor bird, mum?"
"Yes, dear, it's a curlew—I wonder what's the matter with it. Perhaps its mate is hurt."
"What is its mate?"
"The bird it lives with."
"It's afraid of us. It's not like other birds. Is it a real bird, mum?
Or one out of the sky?"
"I think it's real. Shall we go on and see if we can find out what's the matter?"
"Yes."
They went on into the sedgy grass and the curlew continued to circle, vanishing and reappearing from behind the trees, always uttering those shrill cries. Little Gyp said:
"Mum, could we speak to it? Because we're not going to hurt nothing, are we?"
"Of course not, darling! But I'm afraid the poor bird's too wild. Try, if you like. Call to it: 'Courlie! Courlie!"'
Little Gyp's piping joined the curlew's cries and other bird-songs in the bright shadowy quiet of the evening till Gyp said:
"Oh, look; it's dipping close to the ground, over there in that corner—it's got a nest! We won't go near, will we?"
Little Gyp echoed in a hushed voice:
"It's got a nest."
They stole back out of the gate close to the linhay, the curlew still fighting and crying behind them.
"Aren't we glad the mate isn't hurt, mum?"
Gyp answered with a shiver:
"Yes, darling, fearfully glad. Now then, shall we go down and ask Grandy to come up to dinner?"
Little Gyp hopped. And they went toward the river.
At "The Bowl of Cream," Winton had for two years had rooms, which he occupied as often as his pursuits permitted. He had refused to make his home with Gyp, desiring to be on hand only when she wanted him; and a simple life of it he led in those simple quarters, riding with her when Summerhay was in town, visiting the cottagers, smoking cigars, laying plans for the defence of his daughter's position, and devoting himself to the whims of little Gyp. This moment, when his grandchild was to begin to ride, was in a manner sacred to one for whom life had scant meaning apart from horses. Looking at them, hand in hand, Gyp thought: 'Dad loves her as much as he loves me now—more, I think.'
Lonely dinner at the inn was an infliction which he studiously concealed from Gyp, so he accepted their invitation without alacrity, and they walked on up the hill, with little Gyp in the middle, supported by a hand on each side.
The Red House contained nothing that had been in Gyp's married home except the piano. It had white walls, furniture of old oak, and for pictures reproductions of her favourites. "The Death of Procris" hung in the dining-room. Winton never failed to scrutinize it when he came in to a meal—that "deuced rum affair" appeared to have a fascination for him. He approved of the dining-room altogether; its narrow oak "last supper" table made gay by a strip of blue linen, old brick hearth, casement windows hung with flowered curtains—all had a pleasing austerity, uncannily redeemed to softness. He got on well enough with Summerhay, but he enjoyed himself much more when he was there alone with his daughter. And this evening he was especially glad to have her to himself, for she had seemed of late rather grave and absent-minded. When dinner was over and they were undisturbed, he said:
"It must be pretty dull for you, my dear, sometimes. I wish you saw more people."
"Oh no, Dad."
Watching her smile, he thought: 'That's not sour grapes"—What is the trouble, then?'
"I suppose you've not heard anything of that fellow Fiorsen lately?"
"Not a word. But he's playing again in London this season, I see."
"Is he? Ah, that'll cheer them." And he thought: 'It's not that, then.
But there's something—I'll swear!'
"I hear that Bryan's going ahead. I met a man in town last week who spoke of him as about the most promising junior at the bar."
"Yes; he's doing awfully well." And a sound like a faint sigh caught his ears. "Would you say he's changed much since you knew him, Dad?"
"I don't know—perhaps a little less jokey."
"Yes; he's lost his laugh."
It was very evenly and softly said, yet it affected Winton.
"Can't expect him to keep that," he answered, "turning people inside out, day after day—and most of them rotten. By George, what a life!"
But when he had left her, strolling back in the bright moonlight, he reverted to his suspicions and wished he had said more directly: "Look here, Gyp, are you worrying about Bryan—or have people been making themselves unpleasant?"
He had, in these last three years, become unconsciously inimical to his own class and their imitators, and more than ever friendly to the poor—visiting the labourers, small farmers, and small tradesmen, doing them little turns when he could, giving their children sixpences, and so forth. The fact that they could not afford to put on airs of virtue escaped him; he perceived only that they were respectful and friendly to Gyp and this warmed his heart toward them in proportion as he grew exasperated with the two or three landed families, and that parvenu lot in the riverside villas.
When he first came down, the chief landowner—a man he had known for years—had invited him to lunch. He had accepted with the deliberate intention of finding out where he was, and had taken the first natural opportunity of mentioning his daughter. She was, he said, devoted to her flowers; the Red House had quite a good garden. His friend's wife, slightly lifting her brows, had answered with a nervous smile: "Oh! yes; of course—yes." A silence had, not unnaturally, fallen. Since then, Winton had saluted his friend and his friend's wife with such frigid politeness as froze the very marrow in their bones. He had not gone there fishing for Gyp to be called on, but to show these people that his daughter could not be slighted with impunity. Foolish of him, for, man of the world to his fingertips, he knew perfectly well that a woman living with a man to whom she was not married could not be recognized by people with any pretensions to orthodoxy; Gyp was beyond even the debatable ground on which stood those who have been divorced and are married again. But even a man of the world is not proof against the warping of devotion, and Winton was ready to charge any windmill at any moment on her behalf.
Outside the inn door, exhaling the last puffs of his good-night cigarette, he thought: 'What wouldn't I give for the old days, and a chance to wing some of these moral upstarts!'